Canon HV20 & FCP HD4.5

[drbrad]

I broke down and bought a Canon HV20 a couple days ago, paid $999 at Best Buy. Seems like a great camera, but I can't get FCP HD 4.5 (recently upgraded) to see the HV20 at all. I've tried all the settings, no luck. I read something on this site about QT not supporting the HV20, and I'm not sure if I need to upgrade to FCP 5+, or if I'm dead in the water, or what.

I have 2 days worth of HD tapes that I need to edit pretty quickly here, and I can take the HV20 back and get the Sony if I have to, but from all I've read the HV20 looks like a keeper... Any recommendations on my plight?

PS if I can make this work I will have a nearly new GL2 for sale, FYI.

 

[Rod Rod]

I broke down and bought a Canon HV20 a couple days ago, paid $999 at Best Buy. Seems like a great camera, but I can't get FCP HD 4.5 (recently upgraded) to see the HV20 at all. I've tried all the settings, no luck. I read something on this site about QT not supporting the HV20, and I'm not sure if I need to upgrade to FCP 5+, or if I'm dead in the water, or what.

I have 2 days worth of HD tapes that I need to edit pretty quickly here, and I can take the HV20 back and get the Sony if I have to, but from all I've read the HV20 looks like a keeper... Any recommendations on my plight?

PS if I can make this work I will have a nearly new GL2 for sale, FYI.

Depending on which version of iMovie you have, you could probably load the HV20's tapes with it. After that, open the Apple Intermediate Codec files in MPEG Streamclip and transcode it all to DVCProHD (1080i60). The DVCProHD files will work in FCP 4.5.

If iMovie (5 or 6) doesn't work with the HV20, you could attempt a capture with VirtualDVHS or DVHSCap, which are free downloads included in the FireWire SDK from the Apple Developers site. After that capture you'd transcode the files in MPEG Streamclip to DVCProHD, and bring the DVCProHD files into FCP 4.5 to edit.

 

[-DH]

FCP 4.5 does NOT support HDV from any camera. Period. HDV support was not included until FCP 5 and made more stable with 5.1. FCP 6 has now been announced but won't ship until late May so it may be difficult to upgrade to 5.1 at this time.

As Rod Rod stated, you can convert the footage to DVCPro HD (which 4.5 does support) ... or if your intention is to output an SD DVD as a final destination, you can downconvert the footage in camera to DV for capture.

-DH

 

[drbrad]

Okay, great, thanks for your help. I can definitely import using Imovie HD. Let me ask you guys one more question if I might. I have to take all 17 hours of Hi-Def mini-dv tapes and edit it down for web streaming. Can you recommend the easiest workflow on this? I've got Compressor, etc, and the files I want to stream need to be Quicktime. The 17 hours of tape are of a two-day seminar I taught, and it was all shot is high-def, and although I don't need that for streaming, we are going to use all the footage to produce a DVD later on. Any suggestions would be more than helpful!